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Here’s the full breakdown:
*Indicates programming available only in the U.S.
TOP STORIES
Directed by Abel Ferrara
Featuring a new introduction by critic Sean Fennessey, part of Criterion’s Spotlight series
Pulsing with operatic intensity and a furious moral vision all his own, the films of Abel Ferrara comprise one of the most fearless and uncompromising bodies of work in modern cinema. Emerging in the New York of the seventies, he used the grime and sleaze of the city’s margins as a backdrop to subversive tales of sin and redemption, from the urban-nightmare thrillers Ms .45 and Bad Lieutenant to the delirious gangster saga King of New York and the provocative vampire allegory The Addiction. Whether working in science fiction (New Rose Hotel), horror (Body Snatchers), or inside-Hollywood melodrama (Dangerous Game), Ferrara has fused genre thrills with searing personal expression. And since relocating to Rome in his later career, he’s continued to direct searching meditations on art and life like Tommaso. Spanning nearly five decades of defiant independence, his films wrestle with profound themes of faith, power, guilt, and salvation, confronting the depths of human degradation in search of transcendent purity.
FEATURING: The Driller Killer (1979), Ms .45 (1981), Fear City (1984), China Girl (1987), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992), Body Snatchers (1993), Dangerous Game (1993), The Addiction (1995), The Blackout (1997), New Rose Hotel (1998), ’R Xmas (2001), Napoli, Napoli, Napoli (2009), 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011),* Welcome to New York (2014),* The Projectionist (2019), Tommaso(2019), Padre Pio (2022),* Turn in the Wound (2024)
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The boundary-pushing franchise that propelled anime to new heights of psychological, moral, and philosophical complexity, Neon Genesis Evangelion remains a landmark of both adventurous visual storytelling and profound existential inquiry. Set in a postapocalyptic world where teenagers are recruited to pilot giant Multipurpose Humanoid Decisive Weapons—artificial humans known as Evangelions—to defend humanity from mysterious beings called Angels, the story evolves from high-stakes action spectacle into a deeply introspective exploration of identity, trauma, loneliness, and human connection. The original twenty-six-episode series is presented here in both its Japanese-language version and the Classic English dub—the latter of which is made available on streaming for the first time. Revised and expanded by its acclaimed companion films The End of Evangelion and Evangelion Death (True)², Neon Genesis Evangelion represents narrative and aesthetic world-building of the highest order.
SERIES: Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996)
FEATURES: Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997), Evangelion Death (True)² (1998)
Girl Bands!
Women come together to make noise in these electrifying tales of girl bands defying the establishment, chasing stardom, and making their voices heard. From ferocious anthems of punk rebellion like Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains to wildly satirical takes on fame and the music industry like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Josie and the Pussycats to deeply felt stories of friendship and belonging like Linda Linda Linda and K-On! The Movie, this selection of cult favorites (Desperate Teenage Lovedolls) and pop fantasias (Grace of My Heart) celebrates the collective joy of women creating their own sounds, identities, and mythologies.
FEATURING: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), Times Square (1980), Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982), Streets of Fire (1984),* Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (1984), Lovedolls Superstar (1986), Grace of My Heart(1996),* Josie and the Pussycats (2001),* Prey for Rock & Roll (2003), Clean(2004),* Linda Linda Linda (2005), K-On! The Movie (2011)
Starring Madonna
More than a conventional actor, Madonna brings the full force of her own mythology—the raw magnetism, glamour, contradictions, and restless instinct for self-reinvention—to the characters she inhabits. In Desperately Seeking Susan,she updates the classic screwball heroine for the 1980s with effortless charisma and downtown New York cool; in Body of Evidence, she embodies the stylized excess of the erotic thriller; and in Dangerous Game, she draws on her real-life stardom to deliver one of her most vulnerable and unsettling performances, blurring the lines between identity, performance, and fame.
FEATURING: Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Body of Evidence (1993), Dangerous Game (1993)
The Craft of Acting: Paul Dano
A quietly electric screen presence whose ability to convey simmering internal tension has made him one of his generation’s most respected actors, Paul Dano has delivered unforgettable performances for a remarkable roster of major directors, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg, Steve McQueen, Denis Villeneuve, and Bong Joon Ho. In this edition of The Craft of Acting, Dano joins writer Isaac Butler to explore the art of bringing a character to life. Through discussing the formative influence that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s fearlessly vulnerable performance in Boogie Nights had on him, his process of channeling the creative spirit of Brian Wilson in the acclaimed biopic Love & Mercy, and how he harnessed the contrasting acting styles of Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal in his striking directorial debut,Wildlife, Dano offers insight into how he transforms rigorous preparation into riveting, in-the-moment screen alchemy.
FEATURING: Boogie Nights (1997), Love & Mercy (2015), Wildlife (2018)*
STREAMING PREMIERES
Romería
Featuring an introduction by director Carla Simón, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series
An orphaned young woman’s search through the shards of her family’s past becomes an encounter with the missing pieces of her identity, in this graceful reflection on memory and inheritance. Marina (Llúcia Garcia), an aspiring filmmaker, visits the luminous seaside city of Vigo in Northwestern Spain seeking answers about her biological parents’ turbulent lives and mystery-shrouded deaths. As she gets to know her father’s fractious family, she confronts competing narratives and long-buried secrets. Unfolding with a free-flowing lyricism that tips into dream and fantasy, Romería finds director Carla Simón turning a compassionate gaze on her own complex heritage, reclaiming hidden history through the alchemical magic of cinema.
Our Land
With her first documentary feature, acclaimed director Lucrecia Martel (Zama, The Headless Woman) continues her career-long exploration of the injustices and colonial violence lurking beneath the veneer of Argentinean society. Combining urgent moral force and restless formal invention, Our Land illuminates the circumstances surrounding the murder of Javier Chocobar, an unarmed Indigenous activist who was shot while defending himself and his people from encroachment on their land. Connecting Chocobar’s killing to the centuries-old legacy of land and property theft across Latin America, Martel offers an at once intimate and sweeping account of Indigenous resilience in the face of ongoing erasure.
CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS
Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)
Criterion Collection Edition #1278
A courageous cat embarks on a journey through a ruined world in this thrilling, Oscar-winning tale of friendship and survival that took indie animation to new heights of ambition and imagination.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Away (2019), director Gints Zilbalodis’s debut feature; audio commentary by Zilbalodis; interviews with Zilbalodis and cowriter-coproducer Matīss Kaža; and more.
Thief (Michael Mann, 1981)
Criterion Collection Edition #691
James Caan is a professional thief struggling to break free from the criminal underworld in the stylishly moody, neon-spattered debut by action auteur Michael Mann.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Mann and Caan and interviews with Mann, Caan, and Johannes Schmoelling of the band Tangerine Dream, which contributed the film’s soundtrack.
Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968)
Criterion Collection Edition #544
Hey, hey, it’s the Monkees . . . being catapulted through one of American cinema’s most surreal sixties odysseys: a kaleidoscopic blend of media satire, concert movie, and antiwar cry.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by the Monkees, an interview with director Bob Rafelson, screen tests, and more.
Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Micklin Silver, 1979)
Criterion Collection Edition #1176
Joan Micklin Silver digs fearlessly into the psychology of a toxic relationship in this thorny anti–romantic comedy about a man desperately trying to rekindle lost love.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A 1983 documentary about Micklin Silver; a program featuring producers Griffin Dunne, Mark Metcalf, and Amy Robinson; and more.
Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970)
Criterion Collection Edition #1328
Satyajit Ray deconstructs the male buddy comedy in this subversive portrait of four friends whose urban prejudices and entitlements are exposed during a trip to the countryside.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An introduction by filmmaker Wes Anderson; a making-of program featuring interviews with Ray, actors Sharmila Tagore and Rabi Ghosh, and cinematographer Soumendu Roy; and more.
Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
Criterion Collection Edition #977
A severed ear leads a young man down a rabbit hole of depravity in David Lynch’s journey into the nightmare realm beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town America.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: The Lost Footage, fifty-three minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes assembled by Lynch; three documentaries on the making of the film; an interview with composer Angelo Badalamenti; and more.
Wildlife (Paul Dano, 2018)*
Criterion Collection Edition #1031
With his father away battling wildfires, a boy watches his family unravel in the quietly revelatory directorial debut from Paul Dano.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with Dano, screenwriter Zoe Kazan, actors Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal, cinematographer Diego García, production designer Akin McKenzie, and costume designer Amanda Ford; and more.
OUT-OF-PRINT EDITIONS
Collectors rejoice! Not every film the Criterion Collection has released over the last four decades remains in print. Formats change, licenses expire, and catalogues evolve. But here on the Channel, we’re thrilled to showcase some of the special editions we once released on LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-ray, along with the supplements that accompanied them.
Flesh for Frankenstein (Paul Morrissey, 1973)
Criterion Collection Edition #27
Cult icons Udo Kier and Joe Dallesandro star in Paul Morrissey’s reimagining of Mary Shelley’s myth, a riot of kinky transgression that fuses exploitation thrills with an ironic reflexivity.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Morrissey, Kier, and film historian Maurice Yacowar.
Blood for Dracula (Paul Morrissey, 1974)
Criterion Collection Edition #28
Udo Kier sinks his teeth into the role of the infamous Transylvanian count in underground auteur Paul Morrissey’s outrageously subversive, elegantly perverse reinvention of horror mythology.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Morrissey, Kier, and film historian Maurice Yacowar.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
Criterion Collection Edition #304
The otherworldly David Bowie is perfectly cast as an extraterrestrial posing as a human in Nicolas Roeg’s hallucinatory examination of alienation in contemporary life.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Roeg, Bowie, and actor Buck Henry; interviews with screenwriter Paul Mayersberg and actors Candy Clark and Rip Torn; and more.
Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Criterion Collection Edition #392
Identities shift, blur, and dissolve in an existential ghost story, a shocking erotic fable, and a sci-fi nightmare by the visionary Japanese modernist.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Video essays on all three films by critic James Quandt, a documentary about the working relationship between Teshigahara and author Kobo Abe, and more.
REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Featuring an introduction by director Terence Nance, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series
Terence Nance emerged as one of the most exciting and unique voices in American independent cinema with his audaciously original, dizzyingly inventive debut feature. With disarming vulnerability, formal daring, and a playful sense of humor, this one-of-a-kind confessional multimedia collage uses a kaleidoscopic mix of live action, animation, and unchained surrealism to trace the ever-shifting relationship between a sensitive young artist (Nance) and the elusive woman (Namik Minter) who becomes the catalyst for his journey of self-reflection.
Distant Journey
One of the first films to confront the horrors of the Holocaust remains one of the most powerful. Suffused with the visceral dread of a waking nightmare, Distant Journey draws from director and Holocaust survivor Alfréd Radok’s own experiences to tell the story of a Czechoslovak Jewish family—including a young doctor (Blanka Waleská) and her gentile husband (Otomar Krejča)—whose lives are torn apart by the terrors of the Nazi occupation, leading them inexorably to a grim fight for survival in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Blending expressionistic cinematography with archival documentary footage (some drawn from Triumph of the Will) to potent effect, this harrowing vision of human atrocity was banned in its home country for more than forty years, only to reemerge as urgent and impactful as ever.
Nadja
Shot on a shimmering mix of black-and-white 35 mm and hallucinatory Pixelvision video, Michael Almereyda’s gothic mood piece follows New York–based vampire Nadja (Elina Löwensohn) as she reconnects with her twin brother Edgar (Jared Harris) following their father’s death, even as vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) pursues her from Manhattan to Transylvania. Executive produced by David Lynch, this Gen X cult favorite merges elements of the 1936 horror classic Dracula’s Daughter and André Breton’s surrealist novel Nadja for a singularly dreamy, sexy, deadpan reinvention of vampire mythology.
EPISODIC SERIES
Penance
An unsolved murder haunts the lives of four childhood friends in this eerie, intense five-part psychological thriller from master of ambient dread Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Cloud). On a small-town playground, a mysterious stranger approaches a group of young girls. When one is found murdered, the victim’s grief-stricken mother (Kyoko Koizumi) demands that the shaken survivors identify the killer or face a penance of her choosing. Growing up in the shadow of this tragic debt, each of the four girls cultivates a warped survival mechanism: avoidance, desperation, fear, and obsession. A disturbing, intricately constructed exploration of trauma, guilt, and memory from a female perspective, Penanceblends Kurosawa’s trademark atmosphere of creeping unease with a quietly devastating commentary on Japanese gender expectations.
DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHTS
Directed by Susan Seidelman
Featuring an introduction by Seidelman, part of Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series
In 1982, Susan Seidelman instantly established herself as one of the decade’s freshest cinematic voices when her debut feature, Smithereens, became the first American independent film to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. A vividly gritty time capsule of downtown New York’s postpunk underground, the film caught the attention of Hollywood and led to her bigger-budget follow-up, Desperately Seeking Susan, starring Madonna in a screwball romp through bohemian Manhattan. With subsequent gems like the clever sci-fi rom-com Making Mr. Right, Seidelman confirmed her flair for crafting offbeat comedies built around memorably messy, idiosyncratic women.
FEATURES: Smithereens (1982), Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Making Mr. Right (1987)
SHORTS: And You Act Like One Too (1976), Yours Truly, Andrea G. Stern (1979)
Directed by Carla Simón
One of contemporary cinema’s most perceptive chroniclers of fractured family bonds, Spanish director Carla Simón draws from her own complex history for this pair of empathetic, delicately observed portraits of girls growing up in the wake of profound loss. Infused with childhood memories, her luminous debut feature, Summer 1993, is a tender immersion into the world of a newly orphaned six-year-old girl navigating a tangle of confusion after she is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in the Catalan countryside. In the exquisite Romería, Simón once again revisits the unresolved questions of her own heritage, this time from the perspective of a teenager uncovering the long-buried secrets behind her parents’ lives and deaths.
FEATURING: Summer 1993 (2017), Romería (2025)
Directed by Shohei Imamura
Born one hundred years ago this month, Shohei Imamura left behind a body of work chronicling a Japan transformed by war, occupation, and rapid social change, yet still governed by the most primal of human instincts. Though he began his career as an assistant to Yasujiro Ozu, Imamura forged an explosive cinema that stood in direct opposition to the classical master’s elegant restraint. Raw, earthy, sensual, and irreverent, Imamura’s films train an almost anthropological eye on the roiling underclass of Japanese society, revealing a world of criminals, outcasts, deviants, and subjugated women fighting to survive on the margins. From breakthrough works like Pigs and Battleships and The Insect Woman to late-career triumphs like the Palme d’Or winners The Ballad of Narayama and The Eel, Imamura’s films pulse with the anarchic, irrational force of the id.
FEATURING: Stolen Desire (1958), Endless Desire (1958), The Insect Woman(1963), Intentions of Murder (1964), The Pornographers (1966), Profound Desire of the Gods (1968), Vengeance Is Mine (1979), Eijanaika (1981), The Ballad of Narayama (1983), Zegen (1987), The Eel (1997)
Robert A. Nakamura: Godfather of Asian American Media
Heralded as “the Godfather of Asian American media,” Robert A. Nakamura was profoundly shaped by his childhood incarceration in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II, an experience that informed his lifelong exploration of identity, memory, and belonging through activist filmmaking. In landmark works like the intimate documentary Manzanar—one of the first films to confront Japanese internment from a personal perspective—the lyrical Wataridori: Birds of Passage, and the groundbreaking epic Hito Hata: Raise the Banner, Nakamura told stories long excluded from the American narrative, paving the way for the vibrant Asian American independent cinema movement that would flourish in the 1980s. His life and legacy are explored from an intimate vantage in Third Act, a moving documentary by his son Tadashi Nakamura, also presented here.
FEATURES: Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980), Third Act (2025)
SHORTS: Manzanar (1972), Wataridori: Birds of Passage (1976)
SHORT FILMS
Short Films by Darol Olu Kae
The films of Darol Olu Kae assume a free-flowing, almost musical structure to tell richly textured stories of Black family, community, creativity, and inheritance, dissolving time to connect cultural memory to the living present. I Ran from It and Was Still in It interweaves archival fragments with home video to interrogate the personal experience of loss; Keeping Time plays like free-jazz improvisation as it portrays the interplay between multiple generations of musicians honoring and building on each other’s legacies; and Blur draws on family memories to tell a radiantly tender story of connection and caregiving amid the AIDS crisis.
FEATURING: I Ran from It and Was Still in It (2021), Keeping Time (2023), Blur(2025)
AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS
The Love Witch
Featuring an interview with Anna Biller, part of Criterion’s Under the Influence series
A lovelorn witch uses her powers to seduce men in this deliciously subversive brew of classic Technicolor gloss, retro-camp excess, and wicked humor.
INTERNATIONAL CLASSICS
Cemetery Man
A cemetery caretaker (Rupert Everett) contends with love and zombies in the ultimate erotic/romantic/existential cult-horror gorefest.
TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CINEMA
The Little Sister*
A young woman navigates her lesbian identity and loyalty to her French Algerian family in this emotionally resonant portrait of queer awakening, winner of the Best Actress and Queer Palme prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.
Detention
Taiwanese national trauma takes on supernatural form in this gripping coming-of-age nightmare adapted from the hit horror video game.
Marighella
Directed by Wagner Moura—the Oscar-nominated star of The Secret Agent—this electrifying portrait of Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella combines riveting action with a galvanizing antiauthoritarian punch.
MUSIC FILMS
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Hidden in Pieces
Indie-rock royalty the Yeah Yeah Yeahs channel the spirit of David Lynch with this exquisitely ethereal, sublimely surreal record of a Los Angeles concert performance.
DOCUMENTARIES
Documentaries by Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara’s documentary filmmaking channels the same mix of raw immediacy and heightened expressionism that drives his narrative work. From the vanishing traces of New York City’s downtown culture (The Projectionist) to the gritty urban reality of Naples, Italy (Napoli, Napoli, Napoli), to the war-torn landscape of Ukraine in the aftermath of the Russian invasion (Turn in the Wound), his nonfiction films blur the lines between observation, drama, and performance to provocative, hypnotic effect.
FEATURING: Napoli, Napoli, Napoli (2009), The Projectionist (2019), Turn in the Wound (2024)
Los Sures
A vivid portrait of South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the early 1980s captures both the neighborhood’s challenges and the vibrancy of its Puerto Rican and Dominican community.
Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story
Journey into the surreal, hilarious, and poignant world of Frank Sidebottom—the outsider comedy hero who became a cult icon in 1980s Britain—and the complicated man who created him.
New Wave
Mile-high hair. Synthesized music. Underground parties. Discover the untold story of the young Vietnamese American rebels who forged their own Southern California subculture.
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars
Follow avant-garde theater legend Robert Wilson as he struggles to create one of the great unrealized stage productions of the twentieth century.
Uncle Howard
A nephew’s search for his filmmaker uncle’s archive becomes a poignant elegy for a vanished New York and a lost generation of gay artists.
NEW ADDITIONS TO PREVIOUS PROGRAMS
Premiering September 1 in Rock Biopics That Don’t Suck: The Doors
Oliver Stone traces the brief, incendiary life of counterculture icon Jim Morrison with this hallucinatory look at his acid-fueled ascent and spectacular implosion.
Premiering September 1 in Southern Gothic: The Beguiled*
Sofia Coppola brings a female point of view to her hypnotic remake of a story about sexual tensions and rivalries run amok at a girls’ boarding school in the Civil War South.